Author: Sunanda K. Datta-Ray
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: December 1, 2007
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071201/asp/opinion/story_8607905.asp
India needs to pay attention to the ethnic
crisis in Malaysia
Malaysia's simmering ethnic crisis is something
for the ministry of overseas Indian affairs to ponder on. Presumably, the
Pravasi Bharatiya Samman was bestowed on S. Samy Vellu, president since 1979
of the Malaysian Indian Congress and public works minister in the ruling coalition,
because India approves of his work as representative of more than two million
ethnic Indians. Since the man and his constituency are inseparable, convulsions
in the latter that question his leadership oblige India to reassess its attitude
towards the diaspora.
Initially, screaming headlines about Hindus
on the march suggested hordes of ash-smeared trident-brandishing sadhus with
matted locks rampaging to overwhelm Muslim Malaysia. In reality, thousands
of impoverished Tamils carrying crudely drawn pictures of Gandhi sought only
to hand over a petition to the British high commission in Kuala Lumpur about
their plight since their ancestors were imported as indentured labour 150
years ago. It so happened that the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), a
new umbrella group of 30 organizations, mobilized Sunday's protest when Tamils
battled the riot police for six hours.
The confrontation was even farther removed
in space than in time from Lee Kuan Yew's claim in 1959, when Singapore was
waiting to join Malaya, that India was to Malayan culture "what Greece
and Rome are to Western culture". Peninsular Malay was part first of
the Srivijaya empire and then of Rajendra Chola's overseas dominions. Even
modern Islamic Malaysia borrows heavily from India. Terms like Bangsa Melayu
(for the Malay nation) and bumiputera (Malay Muslims), the cherished determinant
of political and economic privilege, expose Malaysia's own unacknowledged
linguistic bankruptcy.
Describing the Thirties excavations in Kedah,
which confirmed that Bujang was a Srivijaya empire port - dating back to the
4th century - within easy sailing distance of India, Time magazine reported
in 2000, "But an Indian Malaysian visiting the Bujang Valley might come
away feeling demeaned rather than proud - and that would be no accident."
Anthony Spaeth, the writer, went on to say that "the official literature
does its best to downplay, even denigrate, the Indian impact on the region".
Ironically, the Indian minority's further
marginalization coincided with the long tenure (1981-2003) of the former prime
minister, the ethnic Indian medical doctor, Mahathir Mohamad. He also took
Malaysia further along the road to Islamization. A kind of competitive Islam
was at play under him with the fundamentalist Parti Islam SeMalaysia demanding
Sharia law and Mahathir's subsequently disgraced lieutenant, Anwar Ibrahim,
peddling what he called Islamic values without "Arabisation".
Lee says Chinese Malaysians (25 per cent)
who have maintained an uneasy peace since the vicious Malay-Chinese riots
of 1969, are being marginalized. But they at least have someone to speak up
for them. They are also able to salt away their savings in Singapore where
they often send their children for education and employment. Lacking any of
these fall-back advantages, the much poorer Indians suffered in silence until
Sunday's upsurge. They did not protest even when six Indians were murdered
and 42 others injured in March 2001 without the authorities bothering to investigate
the attacks.
Nearly 85 per cent of Indian Malaysians are
Tamil, and about 60 per cent of them are descended from plantation workers.
Official statistics say Indians own 1.2 per cent of traded equity (40 per
cent is held by the Chinese) though they constitute eight per cent of the
population. About 5 per cent of civil servants are said to be Indian while
77 per cent are Malay. An Indian who wants to start a business must not only
engage a bumiputera partner but also fork out the latter's 30 per cent share
of equity. The licence-permit raj has run amok with government sanction needed
even to collect garbage. Lowest in the education and income rankings, Indians
lead the list of suicides, drug offenders and jailed criminals. All the telltale
signs of an underclass. While the state gives preferential treatment to bumiputeras,
the MIC has done little to help Indians rise above their initially low socio-economic
base.
Religious devotion often being the last refuge
of those with little else to call their own, Indians set great store by their
temples, which are now the targets of government demolition squads. Many are
technically illegal structures because the authorities will not clear registration
applications. The last straw was the eve-of-Diwali destruction of a 36-year-old
temple in Shah Alam town which is projected as an "Islamic City".
Insult was piled on injury when, having announced that he would not keep the
customary post-Eid open house as a mute mark of protest, Vellu hastily backtracked
as soon as the prime minister frowned at him.
Emotions have been simmering since 2005 when
the mullahs seized the body of a 36-year-old Tamil Hindu soldier and mountaineer,
M. Moorthy, and buried it over the protests of his Hindu wife, claiming Moorthy
had converted to Islam. A Sharia court upheld the mullahs, and when the widow
appealed, a civil judge ruled that Article 121(1A) of Malaysia's constitution
made the Sharia court's verdict final. Civil courts had no jurisdiction. Such
restrictions and, even more, the manner in which rules are implemented, make
a mockery of the constitution's Article 3(1) that "other religions may
be practised in peace and harmony".
Last Sunday's petition was signed by 1,00,000
Indians. The fact that it was provoked by a supposed conversion and a temple
destruction and was sponsored by Hindraf prompted P. Ramasamy, a local academic,
to say, "The character of struggle has changed. It has taken on a Hindu
form - Hinduism versus Islam." But that is a simplification. The protesters
who were beaten up, arrested and charged with sedition were Indians. They
were labelled Hindu because Tamil or Malayali Muslims (like Mahathir) go to
extraordinary lengths to deny their Indian ancestry and wangle their way into
the petted and pampered bumiputera preserve. In Singapore, too, Indian Muslims
who speak Tamil at home or sport Gujarati names drape the headscarf called
tudung on their wives and insist they are Malay. Malaysia's Sikhs also distance
themselves from the Indian definition which has become a metaphor for backwardness.
Branding Sunday's demonstration Hindu automatically
singles out the minority as the adversary in a country whose leaders stress
their Islamic identity. The implication of a religious motivation also distracts
attention from the more serious economic discrimination that lies at the heart
of minority discontent. Acknowledging that "unhappiness with their status
in society was a real issue" for the protesters, even The New Straits
Times, voice of the Malay establishment, commented editorially, "The
marginalisation of the Indian community, the neglect of their concerns and
the alienation of their youth must be urgently addressed."
Some have suggested that the illusory prospect
of fat damages from Hindraf's $4 trillion lawsuit against the British government
may have tempted demonstrators. But the lawyers who lead Hindraf must know
that their plaint is only a symbolic gesture like my Australian aboriginal
friend Paul Coe landing in England and taking possession of it as terra nullius
(nobody's land) because that is what the British did in Australia. The more
serious message is, as The New Straits Times wrote, that secular grievances
must be addressed. Though plantation workers have demonstrated earlier against
employers, never before have they so powerfully proclaimed their dissatisfaction
with the government. In doing so, under Hindraf colours, they have also signified
a loss of confidence in Vellu and the MIC. The worm has turned. There is a
danger now of the government hitting back hard.
All this concerns India, not because of M.
Karunanidhi's fulminations but because interest in overseas Indians must be
even-handed. The diaspora does not begin and end with Silicon Valley millionaires.
Nor should Vayalar Ravi's only concern be V.S. Naipaul and Lakshmi Mittal
whose pictures adorn his ministry's website. Indians of another class are
in much greater need of his attention.
